Four Trees and a Fence, c.1980

Frank Walter was a talented writer and artist whose work was largely overlooked during his lifetime. He suffered from delusions of aristocratic grandeur, namely a belief that the white slave owners in his ancestry linked him to the noble houses of Europe, from Charles II to Franz Joseph of Austria. A self-taught artist, Walter produced paintings that dealt with race, class, and social identity, as well as miniature landscapes of Scotland, the country that he fell in love with during a visit in the 1950s. Walter spent the last 25 years of his life in an isolated shack in Antigua, surrounded by his writings, paintings, and carvings.